Beijing, I miss you already

It's unbelievable how time flies, we'll only be in Beijing for about 11 more hours before moving up towards Mongolia. After lots of running around, waiting at counters and whatnot we finally bought a ticket to Jeanin (I'm sure I misspelled that) yesterday. From there we're hoping to catch a train to Elian (I think I spelled that correctly) which is the last stop before the Mongolian border. Then we'll need to get a train or bus across the boarder before catching a train to Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar. The best-case scenario for this trip is about 2 days, the worst-case scenario is closer to 5 days with me personally placing me bets on something like 3 days. Anyway, as always we'll have to see how it goes...

One thing is for certain, when stepping on that train tomorrow we'll leave most of what civilization has to offer behind us. So let's enjoy these precious last moments with showers, water-toilets, real beds and the internet! I honestly have no clue whether I'll be able to get to an internet cafe anytime soon so this might well be the last update for the next week or two.

These past 2 days were quite busy and I think I really fell for Beijing. It's hard or rather impossible to describe but there's something about this city that really attracts me and wants me to stay longer or rather come back in the not-too distant future. I always knew that 4 days here were going to be very little but I've only started to scratch the surface around here and I could easily spend another week here without being bored.

Yesterday, after purchasing our train-tickets, we went to the Forbidden City which was a really great experience and significantly better than what I had expected. The whole day was a bit foggy which normally makes taking decent photos more difficult than it should be but yesterday it only added to the magic of an already stunning place. Additionally we were quite lucky because there weren't too many people around at times which really made taking photos a pleasant experience. I can't wait to see them on the big screen! I guess the one thing I liked best about the Forbidden City, or in fact about Beijing in general, is the use of space when building something. The Tian'anmen Square is probably the best example of this as it's the most amazing man-made space that I've ever seen. 400,000sqm of space. You really have to see it to believe it! In fact I liked to square to much that I'm going to get out of bed early tomorrow morning to still have some quiet time to simply sit there and enjoy it. The Forbidden City is somewhat similar in that it's use of space - the yards - between the various buildings is simply breathtaking. I'll definitely upload some photos once I get home and then you'll see what I'm talking about as it's really not possible to describe it in words.

After being in the Forbidden City for around 2 1/2 hours Patrick and I decided to look for the Temple of Havens. Of course we didn't have a map so we started walking into the general direction of where we though it would be. After some time we realized that our feet we demanding a break so we went to a subway-station, took a photo of the map with the Chinese characters for the temple and then proceeded to look for an empty taxi (not that easy during the rush-hour). After spending more than 15min looking for such a taxi we found one but the driver had not clue what to do when I showed him the map of Beijing with the Temple of Havens characters on the screen of my digital camera. First he wanted to take a photo of me, then we showed the image to a collegue and in the end he turned us down, somehow gesturing that he wouldn't want to drive us there. You can imagine how happy we were about that. So we ended up walking the whole way which took us more than an hour. We finally did make it, lucky yo arrive at the Temple 10min before it was closed. This gave us a great chance to enjoy the temple, or rather the main 3-story Pagoda (spelling?) with as few other people as possible. Just before leaving that great place we even managed to take some pictures of the whole structure without any people being there. Needless to say it was well worth the exhausting way.

Today we got up at around 5 a.m., had some breakfast and then started out tour to the Great Wall at 6:20 a.m. The three hour bus-ride (which wasn't all that relaxing due to the excessive A/C and bumpy road) took us to JinShanLing from where we made a 10km hike on the wall to Simatei. The weather was beautiful and the light allowed for some great (or so I hope) photos to be taken. The Great Wall just basicallz sits a top of hills and often offers breathtaking views of the wall (and towers) ahead and behind you. For the first 2/3 of the way the landscape is also extremely nice and unspoilt by civilization. According to Patrick, who visited it at Badaling - which is much closer to Beijing - the Great Wall as a monument is significantly more impressive there (bigger, higher, faster) than what we saw today. I also have to admit that I was a tiny bit underwhelmed by the structure itself, given that the wall we all know from photos is up to 7m wide and 16m high. In JinShanLing on the other hand it's significantly smaller than that. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd rather recommend going to Badaling, especially if you're on a tight time-budget. Don't get me wrong, I had an outstanding time today (except maybe for when we had to go up the infamous "130 steps" which nearly killed me and when a Chinese vendor asked whether Patrick and me were brothers) and even though we suffered through the midday-heat and 6h of riding on a bus the whole experience was great. Walking on the wall really does give you a good impression of the astonishing construction-marvel it is and it also gives you the necessary time to reflect and really enjoy the beautiful scenery. However if you're more into the "shock & awe" type of experience then Badaling should probably be your first choice.

My evening was spent waiting for the washing/drying machine to finish getting its work done on our clothes (remember no more civilization in the coming week or so!) before heading out to look for some food. Having read through Martina's guide-book I had decided that a restaurant for Indian and Thai food sounded like a good place to spend the last evening. (Patrick stayed at home due to a messed up stomach and Martina plus Fernando had already eaten.) So I took the last subway (note: subways here in Beijing only go until about 10:30 p.m.) so the district where I was hoping to find that restaurant. 30min later (and several questions about whether I was looking for massages, drugs, prostitutes, whatever) I gave up the search for it and went for a beer in the garden of a more or less fancy hotel close to the Chinese Trade Center. Still being hungry (I had only eaten breakfast and a sandwich as lunch) I looked for other options and decided that a 24h Chinese fast-food joint going by the name of "Be there, be square" sounded like a viable option. At this point I discovered it's really impossible to find a decent place to eat after 10 p.m., unless you want to go for an American fast-food brand called McDonald's that is, as most Chinese restaurants seem to close to 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m. I guess you can find something if you know exactly where to look but that wasn't the case here as none of the places mentioned in the Lonely Planet "Best of Beijing" seemed to exist anymore. Hell, I didn't even find a 24h convenience-store (7/11 where are you, I miss you!) to buy some instant noodles and beer. At some point I even considered going to one of the restaurants at the Grand Hyatt Beijing (not the cheapest hotel I might add) to ask for a sandwich or something. In the end I decided to call it a day and went home, grabbed a beer ("Tsingatio" which is quite good) at a small store and now I've spent the past hour or so standing in front of the computer in our hostel's lobby and typing these lines...

Without any beer left in my bottle and my hungry stomach coming to haunt me it's probably a wise decision to press the orange "send" button and head off to grab some sleep.

Beijing, I miss you already

Our first full day in Beijing...

Our first full day in Beijing actually turned out to be only about half a day given that we only woke up at around 2 p.m. So it was only about 3 p.m. until we finally got to the streets. One of the first missions was to find something that could serve as breakfast and Patrick and me settled for some nice cookies for about 0.1 Euro each. We then proceeded to move towards the main train-station as we wanted to get some actual information about the train-options to Ulaanbaatar given that everything we knew up to now was quite iffy so to say. As expected things turned out to be rather difficult with my personal highlight being the first counter which simply closed once we started asking some questions about possible trains. (Do you remember that electro-shock idea from yesterday, that would come in handy in such a situation.) Anyway, after much waiting and looking for an international counter we ended up forcing the officer at counter #1 to switch with his collegue as he couldn't speak any English. We then found out that the train-option we had been looking for (and the travel agent in our hostel told us existed) isn't actually available. So after more deliberation and sitting in the sun with little children having a good time with talking to us (and trying to convince us that we should hand them our ice-tea bottles) we moved on to the "Beijing International Hotel" to find the office of the CITS (think it stands for "Chinese International Train Service") which of course had closed 30min before our arrival (atm the opening times are something like 8:30 a.m. to 12 and 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.).

By this time the sun had started setting and the light was just beautiful for taking photos so Patrick and me went for our cameras and starting shooting. The highlight was definitely Tian'anmen Square which looked extremely nice, hope to show you some photos of it at one point or another. As everyone was quite hungry, especially after seeing the ceremony of a Chinese flag being taken down (somewhere close to Tian'anmen) we decided to go into a small local restaurant in one of the side-alleys. The menu was Chinese-only so the food was chosen with a mixture of pointing at photos, our neighbour's dishes and random selection on the menu. Everything turned out to be quite good, even though we didn't really know what it was. Needless to say that I also enjoyed the beer!

In the evening we wanted to look for a bar or something similar to go out a bit. Apparently going out is not a big thing around here because the lady in the hotel responded by "I've never done it myself, but I heard that you might something long this street." So we went there by subway and on foot only to find a rather nice but very quiet road with the minimum amount of life there. After some time we did see some lights going up into the sky and therefore found a disco / KTV place of sorts. However we didn't decide to go into it which turned out to be good decision as just behind the disco there's a small lake (can't remember it's name though) which is surrounded by lots and lots of bars. Patrick mentioned that when he was in Beijing 2 years the whole place was just one huge construction site so this is definitely something quite new and artificial. We ended the day with beer and cocktails before heading home for some well-deserved (I'd like to think;-) sleep. Of course it's close to 3 a.m. by now and the others are sleeping already while I'm still typing these lines...

Tomorrow we're planning to get up at around 8 a.m., grab some breakfast and then head off to that CITS office to purchase the train-tickets to Mongolia. Afterwards we intend to go to the Forbidden City and visit another temple or two in the afternoon. For the evening we might go to a (a) Beijing Opera or (b) Beijing Duck dinner. For Wednesday we booked a tour for the Great Wall which should also be fun as we'll be going to one of the less touristy spots and walk 10km on the wall before being picked up again.

Well, good night for now...

Welcome to China

So, here we are, standing in the lobby of the "Beijing Far East International Youth Hostel", happy to be able to log into blogger and write this message. Even though we're not able to access the blog itself. (Update: It is possible, just do a quick search for "anonymizer" on Google;-)

We had a good ride from Munich, with very nice flight-attendants and good food on both legs of our journey. And now I think it's safe to say that we also had a very good start into Beijing. At least as soon as we got into our cab after having to wait in line for 45min while watching endless loops of ads for the Olympics (which are really omnipresent around here) and terrible Chinese TV-shows. So, first lesson learned: next time opt for the pick-up service from the hostel which would have cost us RMB150 (instead of the RMB120 we paid for the regular cab) but would have saved us quite some time and energy. And if you decide to go for the regular cab then at least don't be so stupid as to not use a trolley for you backpack, because after 22h on planes it's quite pain in the rear to stand around with 20kg on your back.

Anyway, once we got into the cab things started to look up. Especially when the driver, after thinking hard for 15min, muttered the words "Welcome to China" with a big friendly smile on his face.

The hotel is situated in the immensely charming Hutong area, which is still (maybe as still in not very long from now...) reflecting the traditional Chinese way of housing. We walked around a bit before settling into a small restaurant on the street for some nice food and a good Chinese beer! Afterwards we decided to look for Tian'anmen square (for more details see Patrick's comment below), we weren't quite sure which direction to walk once we left "our" street. Maybe another note about the immediate neighbourhood: it's quite touristy in a "Lonely Planet / backpacker / individual" kind of way, with lots of small shops, travel agents and restaurants with English menus. Plus there's one bar aka "tourist trap" which is easily distinguishable by being the only place with loud music playing.

One random amusing observation was made at the immigration counter on the airport as you can evaluate the officer's performance on a smiley-scale from very good to very bad. We don't know what happens when you press the "unhappy button" - at least in my mind the officer then gets an electric shock or something. Now how about installing such a device at the OBB-counters, in every Bezirksamt and Magistrat and offer this as an option on a telephone hotline. "Please press a number from 1 to 9 to evaluate the support you've received." #9 BUZZZ...

Well, 'nuff said for today, it's time to grab some sleep!

Patrick's free of sense corner:
After finding heavenly peace by consuming a cheap Costa-Rican cigar from Dubai on the square of heavenly peace under the watchful eyes of chinese authorities and contributing to both the amusement and photographical motives of chinese tourists and pedestrians we have truly and finally arrived in this wonderful city. Viva!
P.S.: Christoph is a fucking hacker:-)

9 hours to go

In a bit more than 9 hours we're going to start our journey by getting on that train to Munich... Hooray!! :-)

Today was spent with some last minute shopping and we should be all set now. At least I can't think of anything we've forgotten.

In the evening I started packing all my things into that brand new backpack of mine. Here's a photo of what my room looked like with all the items from my "to-be-packed" list strewn across the bed and floor...

Now when I turn around I'm presented with a significantly better view. The main backpack is quite full and my carry-on backpack (which will also be used for day-trips) will also be packed once I add my camera and some other things which are still missing.

Unfortunately my sleeping bag (the green thing on the left) didn't quite make it into the backpacks so I'll have to carry it when boarding the plane. I certainly hope that Emirates isn't too picky about enforcing their "1 carry-on bag only" policy. Especially since my overall weight is well below what I'm allowed to bring (20kg + 6kg) with my backpack coming in at around ~14kg and the small one with 4kg.

Well, I'm off for now, I still need to get some things done before I can call it a day. Plus I'm still thinking about heading to a friend for a last sip of Austrian beer.

Next stop: Beijing...

ARGH, stupid blog-entries via e-mail

Now those submissions via e-mail are really working well, hm?

Ah, screw it, if possible I'll post new entries the plain old-fashioned way and in case I can only do it via e-mail, well, then we'll all have to live with a shitty looking text-formatting.

And now I've spent enough time with this blog, back to real-life...

Blogging via e-mail: 2nd attempt

The reason why the formatting on the post below is messed up is that I
submitted that entry via e-mail. Somehow my e-mail client (Thunderbird
2) seems to like screwing up the formatting.

Anyway, here's another attempt to blog via e-mail, this time I'm
writing the message via my university's webmail service...

We'll see how it goes!

So much to do, so little time

Only 36 more hours before we get on that train to Munich Airport... And
in 2 1/2 days we're already going to be in Bejing!! :-)

Tomorrow will be a pretty busy day as I still need to buy my sleeping
bag as I wasn't able to find a suitable one while I was in Vienna these
past two days. Plus thanks to the f****** moron at outdoorversand.at
(who sent the Nortland Kailash 70+10 backpacks we ordered to another
customer and now we won't get it in time) we still need to buy a
backpack tomorrow. There are two Nortland stores which are relatively
close by where we hope to find good backpacks. I rang one up 10min
before they called it a day and they had one Kailash 70+10 still in
stock. However they received a large shipment today which they haven't
unboxed so I'm quite optimistic about getting the ones we want tomorrow.
One way or another it's another thing that I'll have to take care off
and I'm not too happy about it. *grml*

On another note I tested out my iso-matrace half an hour ago and it's
really quite confortable, which it of course should be given that I
spent €60 on it...